Andrew Adkins – Independent Project

Andrew Adkins – Independent Project

Class of 2017

Introduction to Topic

This project was done to help hospitals better utilize their space and to more effectively manage the equipment that they use on a daily basis. I chose to do this project because during my time as a volunteer at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center I saw many issues that could be solved if a better storage unit was designed. The objective of this project is to maximize the efficiency of hospital staff by redesigning the equipment storage rooms and implementing an RFID tracking system to locate hospital equipment.

Project Description

Through my volunteer service at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center I was able to get a firsthand look at some of the day to day operations of a hospital. This included seeing what types of equipment was used by the nurses and physicians on a regular basis. Part of my duties as a volunteer was to stock this equipment and move it from the clean utility room into the nurse’s services and supply closets attached to patient rooms. It was during this job that I began to realize that there must be a better way to manage the equipment that is in this closet because the current way of doing things was frustrating and slowed me down. There was also issues with other staff members and myself locating equipment that was moved out of our specific unit. It took a very long time to search the hospital for this equipment. I realized that I could combine these two separate ideas and create a company that develops an equipment tracking software and helps hospitals better utilize their space.

Experience Description

I completed my experience at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center, there I was a volunteer who worked in the three west orthopedic unit. My daily duties included stocking nurse’s servers, ensuring the sanitation of the unit and making sure that the nurses and physicians can give the patients the best care that they can. There I learned what the normal duties of the hospital staff are and what exactly the different positions roles were in the hospital. This includes what the nurses do and how their job differs from the techs and physicians. Many times throughout my experience I had to enter the clean utility room in order to get the supplies that were needed to do my various tasks. This room was a very small room and was filled with equipment that included: gloves, IV tubing, tissues, telemetry pads, contamination gowns, alcohol swabs, toothbrushes, socks for patients and various other equipment that would be used by hospital staff members. Unfortunately for me the room was not very well organized and the equipment did not seem to be organized in any particular way. This create many problems for me because I would have to waste time searching for equipment. There were some exciting moments like when a patient had a stroke or when I had to go searching the hospital for our equipment cart but, the work was often very redundant and I was often doing the same tasks each week without much change. There was not much training once i got to the floor and I often felt as though i didn’t know what to do during the first few weeks. The staff members, especially the nurses, were often not the most welcoming to the volunteers and I often felt uncomfortable asking for more things to do. The secretaries and charge nurses at the front nurse’s station were for the most part friendly and I felt as though I could ask them for help or another assignment. I did not see any other volunteers in my unit while I was working and I would have liked to talk with another volunteer and hear the things that they would improve about the experience. Overall the experience was very rewarding because I was able to assist my community while also getting some insight into the day to day operations of a hospital and what could possibly be improved.

Innovation Description

The innovation that I designed was a new clean utility room that the hospital can use to better take advantage of the limited amount of space that they currently have. The current clean utility room that exists in the hospital now is disorganized and cluttered. To a person that has never had any training in the hospital the room is difficult to navigate and finding the proper equipment takes much longer than what would normally be required. When first entering the clean utility room on the left-hand side, the first thing that is noticed is the shelves of various small equipment items that are used in the patient rooms, a few examples of these things would include: patient personal care items such as socks, tooth brushes and tissues. Then directly in front as you walk into the room there is a shelf that contains various IV equipment including the primary IV tubing and secondary Iv tubing. To the right of this shelf there is a shelf that contains all the gloves that the nurses use and this includes small medium and large gloves. Behind the IV tubing shelf there is more equipment storage that continues along the back wall. Things that are stored here include: alcohol swabs, isolation gowns, telemetry pads and other various IV tubing. There are also two sinks located in the clean utility room used by the nurses to clean their hands and to sanitize any reusable equipment that might have been contaminated. The current layout of the room is very confusing to a new person coming into the unit and unfortunately many of the volunteers do not receive any training regarding where anything is in the room. This cuts down the efficiency of the volunteer and makes the job of stocking nurse’s servers much more difficult than it has to be. The new room that was deigned is laid out in a way that makes finding the proper equipment much more efficient, even for a person that has no medical training. The equipment that is needed for stocking the various carts is located on its own shelving unit in the new design. This makes it much easier for a volunteer to enter the room and know which equipment belongs where. This will reduce the amount of time spent searching for various equipment and supplies needed for a specific cart. The supplies that do not belong on a cart or in a nurse’s server are also located on one shelf separate from the others. This is to make it easier to find equipment that may be needed in an emergency or for just routine work such as gloves or the IV tubing. Also, located in the new design is a computer that contains the other innovation that is used by hospital staff and volunteers to locate larger equipment throughout the building. This computer is located in the corner away from the other supplies to give the staff member working at the station privacy while they search for the item that they need. The computer is also located in the clean utility room because it allows staff members to find the cart that they need and to gather the supplies that belong on that particular cart before they exit the room, this increases efficiency and cuts down on the number of trips that a staff member would need to take to the room. The software that is on the computer in the room is the next innovation that was designed. This software is designed to allow the staff to locate a large equipment item such as: crash carts and anesthesia carts or any other cart that is used throughout the hospital. When first entering the software, there are three sections: Find Equipment, View Map and Equipment List. When clicking on Find Equipment it takes you to a page with the locations of the different carts on that particular floor. The carts are organized by their type, these types are: Bedside Carts, Equipment Carts, Anesthesia Carts, Respiratory Carts and Crash Carts. By clicking on one of the icons that represent the particular cart it takes you to the equipment list of what belongs on the cart. For example, by clicking on the Crash Cart icon it takes you to a page that has the same icon and contains picture of what the cart will look like. The page also contains a brief description of the usage of the cart. There is also an Equipment Checklist that should be used by the hospital staff to ensure that everything is where it needs to be before it is used to treat a patient. For the crash cart the equipment checklist is: Defibrillator and or AED, EpiPen, Epinephrine, IV ports and IV tubing (Haluka, 2016). The second section on the homepage of the software is a map of the hospital that contains the locations of the various carts. On this page, there is a color coordinated key that represents the different type of carts. A Bedside Cart is represented by a blue circle, an Equipment Cart is represented by a green circle, an Anesthesia Cart is represented by a purple circle a Crash Cart is represented by a red circle and a Respiratory Cart is identified by a yellow circle. The map works on an RFID system that is similar to a currently existing patient tracking system that uses the same technology. As the equipment is moved throughout the hospital to various locations the RFID will identify the cart and track the carts location. On the find equipment page off of the home screen there is a feature where a staff member could click on the words underneath of the section heading that include the number of the cart and the location of the cart. By clicking on this the staff member is taken to the map where the particular cart’s dot is highlighted, which indicates its specific location. This is helpful when a specific cart is needed or a staff member is looking for an item that belongs to their particular unit. This will cut down on the amount of time that is wasted when staff members or volunteers go out of their unit to look for and locate a cart that belongs to their unit. With this innovation, the tracking of the hospital’s large equipment is streamlined and becomes more efficient to use. This is essential to the day to day operations of the hospital because these carts are essential to saving patient lives and in health care wasted time can make a patient’s condition deteriorate more rapidly. The final innovation is to create the company that will develop and implement these innovations into the hospitals. This company is named Location Medical and the logo and name is implemented into the home screen of the software that was developed. Our target market that we want to develop our products for is a large hospital that would have multiple departments and contain hundreds of patient beds such as Upper Chesapeake Medical Center. The job of Location Medical would be to implement our software into their system while also redesigning the current layout of their equipment storage areas such as a clean utility room. By combining these two things the efficiency of the hospital staff will increase dramatically because all of the equipment can be located and stocked from a single location. This makes the day to day operations of any hospital or medical facility more efficient. This will save patient lives and make hospital stays shorter because the response times of specialized equipment will be reduced.

Introduction to Topic

This project was done to help hospitals better utilize their space and to more effectively manage the equipment that they use on a daily basis. I chose to do this project because during my time as a volunteer at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center I saw many issues that could be solved if a better storage unit was designed. The objective of this project is to maximize the efficiency of hospital staff by redesigning the equipment storage rooms and implementing an RFID tracking system to locate hospital equipment.

Project Description

Through my volunteer service at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center I was able to get a firsthand look at some of the day to day operations of a hospital. This included seeing what types of equipment was used by the nurses and physicians on a regular basis. Part of my duties as a volunteer was to stock this equipment and move it from the clean utility room into the nurse’s services and supply closets attached to patient rooms. It was during this job that I began to realize that there must be a better way to manage the equipment that is in this closet because the current way of doing things was frustrating and slowed me down. There was also issues with other staff members and myself locating equipment that was moved out of our specific unit. It took a very long time to search the hospital for this equipment. I realized that I could combine these two separate ideas and create a company that develops an equipment tracking software and helps hospitals better utilize their space.

Experience Description

I completed my experience at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center, there I was a volunteer who worked in the three west orthopedic unit. My daily duties included stocking nurse’s servers, ensuring the sanitation of the unit and making sure that the nurses and physicians can give the patients the best care that they can. There I learned what the normal duties of the hospital staff are and what exactly the different positions roles were in the hospital. This includes what the nurses do and how their job differs from the techs and physicians. Many times throughout my experience I had to enter the clean utility room in order to get the supplies that were needed to do my various tasks. This room was a very small room and was filled with equipment that included: gloves, IV tubing, tissues, telemetry pads, contamination gowns, alcohol swabs, toothbrushes, socks for patients and various other equipment that would be used by hospital staff members. Unfortunately for me the room was not very well organized and the equipment did not seem to be organized in any particular way. This create many problems for me because I would have to waste time searching for equipment. There were some exciting moments like when a patient had a stroke or when I had to go searching the hospital for our equipment cart but, the work was often very redundant and I was often doing the same tasks each week without much change. There was not much training once i got to the floor and I often felt as though i didn’t know what to do during the first few weeks. The staff members, especially the nurses, were often not the most welcoming to the volunteers and I often felt uncomfortable asking for more things to do. The secretaries and charge nurses at the front nurse’s station were for the most part friendly and I felt as though I could ask them for help or another assignment. I did not see any other volunteers in my unit while I was working and I would have liked to talk with another volunteer and hear the things that they would improve about the experience. Overall the experience was very rewarding because I was able to assist my community while also getting some insight into the day to day operations of a hospital and what could possibly be improved.

Innovation Description

The innovation that I designed was a new clean utility room that the hospital can use to better take advantage of the limited amount of space that they currently have. The current clean utility room that exists in the hospital now is disorganized and cluttered. To a person that has never had any training in the hospital the room is difficult to navigate and finding the proper equipment takes much longer than what would normally be required. When first entering the clean utility room on the left-hand side, the first thing that is noticed is the shelves of various small equipment items that are used in the patient rooms, a few examples of these things would include: patient personal care items such as socks, tooth brushes and tissues. Then directly in front as you walk into the room there is a shelf that contains various IV equipment including the primary IV tubing and secondary Iv tubing. To the right of this shelf there is a shelf that contains all the gloves that the nurses use and this includes small medium and large gloves. Behind the IV tubing shelf there is more equipment storage that continues along the back wall. Things that are stored here include: alcohol swabs, isolation gowns, telemetry pads and other various IV tubing. There are also two sinks located in the clean utility room used by the nurses to clean their hands and to sanitize any reusable equipment that might have been contaminated. The current layout of the room is very confusing to a new person coming into the unit and unfortunately many of the volunteers do not receive any training regarding where anything is in the room. This cuts down the efficiency of the volunteer and makes the job of stocking nurse’s servers much more difficult than it has to be. The new room that was deigned is laid out in a way that makes finding the proper equipment much more efficient, even for a person that has no medical training. The equipment that is needed for stocking the various carts is located on its own shelving unit in the new design. This makes it much easier for a volunteer to enter the room and know which equipment belongs where. This will reduce the amount of time spent searching for various equipment and supplies needed for a specific cart. The supplies that do not belong on a cart or in a nurse’s server are also located on one shelf separate from the others. This is to make it easier to find equipment that may be needed in an emergency or for just routine work such as gloves or the IV tubing. Also, located in the new design is a computer that contains the other innovation that is used by hospital staff and volunteers to locate larger equipment throughout the building. This computer is located in the corner away from the other supplies to give the staff member working at the station privacy while they search for the item that they need. The computer is also located in the clean utility room because it allows staff members to find the cart that they need and to gather the supplies that belong on that particular cart before they exit the room, this increases efficiency and cuts down on the number of trips that a staff member would need to take to the room. The software that is on the computer in the room is the next innovation that was designed. This software is designed to allow the staff to locate a large equipment item such as: crash carts and anesthesia carts or any other cart that is used throughout the hospital. When first entering the software, there are three sections: Find Equipment, View Map and Equipment List. When clicking on Find Equipment it takes you to a page with the locations of the different carts on that particular floor. The carts are organized by their type, these types are: Bedside Carts, Equipment Carts, Anesthesia Carts, Respiratory Carts and Crash Carts. By clicking on one of the icons that represent the particular cart it takes you to the equipment list of what belongs on the cart. For example, by clicking on the Crash Cart icon it takes you to a page that has the same icon and contains picture of what the cart will look like. The page also contains a brief description of the usage of the cart. There is also an Equipment Checklist that should be used by the hospital staff to ensure that everything is where it needs to be before it is used to treat a patient. For the crash cart the equipment checklist is: Defibrillator and or AED, EpiPen, Epinephrine, IV ports and IV tubing (Haluka, 2016). The second section on the homepage of the software is a map of the hospital that contains the locations of the various carts. On this page, there is a color coordinated key that represents the different type of carts. A Bedside Cart is represented by a blue circle, an Equipment Cart is represented by a green circle, an Anesthesia Cart is represented by a purple circle a Crash Cart is represented by a red circle and a Respiratory Cart is identified by a yellow circle. The map works on an RFID system that is similar to a currently existing patient tracking system that uses the same technology. As the equipment is moved throughout the hospital to various locations the RFID will identify the cart and track the carts location. On the find equipment page off of the home screen there is a feature where a staff member could click on the words underneath of the section heading that include the number of the cart and the location of the cart. By clicking on this the staff member is taken to the map where the particular cart’s dot is highlighted, which indicates its specific location. This is helpful when a specific cart is needed or a staff member is looking for an item that belongs to their particular unit. This will cut down on the amount of time that is wasted when staff members or volunteers go out of their unit to look for and locate a cart that belongs to their unit. With this innovation, the tracking of the hospital’s large equipment is streamlined and becomes more efficient to use. This is essential to the day to day operations of the hospital because these carts are essential to saving patient lives and in health care wasted time can make a patient’s condition deteriorate more rapidly. The final innovation is to create the company that will develop and implement these innovations into the hospitals. This company is named Location Medical and the logo and name is implemented into the home screen of the software that was developed. Our target market that we want to develop our products for is a large hospital that would have multiple departments and contain hundreds of patient beds such as Upper Chesapeake Medical Center. The job of Location Medical would be to implement our software into their system while also redesigning the current layout of their equipment storage areas such as a clean utility room. By combining these two things the efficiency of the hospital staff will increase dramatically because all of the equipment can be located and stocked from a single location. This makes the day to day operations of any hospital or medical facility more efficient. This will save patient lives and make hospital stays shorter because the response times of specialized equipment will be reduced.